Only Hillary Clinton Can Replace Ted Kennedy as “the Great Lion of Social Reform”

After the beating Hillary Clinton took from the corrupt Democratic party and its media allies throughout the primary with the sole purpose of crowning Barack Obama king at Mile High Stadium, she’s still described in the November 10th issue of the New Yorker as the only senator with “the wonky expertise, work habits, and political stature to fill Ted Kennedy’s place as the “great lion of social reform.”

In his piece titled “The Test,” Steve Coll doesn’t bother to recap the Obama camp’s under the radar smears during the primary that labeled Sen. Clinton a racist, a liar, and someone willing to sell her soul to win the nomination. Washington Post and NY Times op-ed writers who were only too glad to amplify these egregious attacks on Clinton included several I once respected, but no more: E. J. Dionne, Harold Myerson, Eugene Robinson, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich, and Nick Kristoff. Lest I forget, even the Boston Globe’s James Carroll joined the smear brigade against both Bill and Hillary Clinton in a column immediately preceding the rigged Democratic Convention.

Back to the present: Coll sees two major challenges facing either John McCain or Barack Obama the day he takes office:

“The next Presidency has within its reach at least two generation-spanning causes: the need to jump-start a new energy economy, and, in so doing, help to contain climate change; and the need to enact a plan to provide quality health care to all Americans, and, in so doing, complete the project of social insurance that Roosevelt described in 1935. Each of these projects is urgent, but it is health-care reform that speaks more directly to the economic and human dimensions of the present downturn."

Coll continues:

'"Presidents who help right a wrong of this character are generally immortalized in granite, but to succeed they require a transformation-minded Congress, too. The next Congress will likely be without the active leadership of its great lion of social reform, Ted Kennedy. There is only one senator with the wonky expertise, work habits, and political stature to fill Kennedy’s place: Hillary Clinton. The psychology she would bring to this inheritance would surely be complex, but no health-care-reform bill will pass without her. Lyndon Johnson, also a person of complex psychology, understood this politics of legacy well. At the Medicare signing ceremony, he invited Jimmy Roosevelt, F.D.R.’s eldest son, and the aging Harry Truman, who had pushed hard for health-care reform, to share the glory. Johnson, in his remarks, linked them (and himself, of course) to the Social Security Act and its “illustrious place in history,” and he carefully recited an 'honor roll' of fifteen congressional leaders who contributed to the bill’s passage. It was, Johnson said, a 'time for triumph.' It is, even more so, today."'

I'm with Coll: without Sen. Hillary Clinton’s help, neither McCain nor Obama can meet the above challenges. And it's a national travesty of justice that Clinton's name will not be on the ballot in tomorrow's presidential election when Americans will be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils or follow Obama's example as an Illinois State legislator and vote "present."

To read Coll’s article in its entirety, go here.